What happens to poetry when civilisation itself appears fragmented, exhausted, and spiritually uncertain?

In this episode of Literary Rides, we explore the revolutionary poetic world of T.S. Eliot — the towering modernist writer who transformed twentieth-century literature through fragmentation, allusion, myth, and intellectual intensity. From the anxious paralysis of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to the cultural desolation of “The Waste Land,” Eliot created a poetic language capable of expressing the psychological and spiritual crises of modernity.

The episode examines Eliot’s groundbreaking critical theories, especially his influential essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” where he introduced concepts such as the historical sense, poetic impersonality, and the objective correlative. We also investigate the tensions and contradictions within Eliot’s work, asking whether the poet who argued against personal emotion in literature was nevertheless revealing profound psychological anxieties through his poetry.

Alongside detailed discussions of modernist techniques, urban alienation, intertextuality, mythic structure, and cultural decay, this conversation situates Eliot within the larger intellectual landscape of literary modernism and explores his lasting influence on criticism, poetry, and academic literary studies.

This episode is especially valuable for UGC NET English students, MA English learners, researchers, teachers, and anyone interested in understanding how literature responded to the fractured consciousness of the modern world.

Why do accents matter? How do speech sounds reveal identity, class, gender, region, ethnicity, and social belonging? In this episode of Literary Rides, we explore the fascinating field of sociophonetics through the work of Tyler Kendall and Valerie Fridland. Bringing together sociolinguistics and phonetics, sociophonetics investigates the relationship between sound patterns and social meaning.

The episode examines how everyday speech carries markers of regional identity, age, gender performance, and cultural affiliation. It also explains how researchers analyse vowels, consonants, intonation, and sibilants to understand language variation and change across communities.

Moving beyond traditional linguistic analysis, the discussion also addresses the growing role of computational methods, automatic speech recognition, and artificial intelligence in speech research. The episode demonstrates how modern technologies are reshaping the study of language while raising important questions about identity, representation, and linguistic diversity.

Designed for students of linguistics, sociolinguistics, phonetics, cultural studies, and UGC NET English, this episode provides both conceptual clarity and contemporary academic relevance.

What hidden desires shape literature? Why do certain stories resemble dreams, fantasies, fears, and psychological obsessions? In this episode of Literary Rides, we explore the fascinating world of psychoanalytic criticism through the ideas of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and later feminist critiques of representation and the male gaze.

The discussion examines Freud’s theory of the unconscious, repression, wish fulfilment, and the idea of the writer as a “dreamer in broad daylight.” We investigate how psychoanalytic criticism interprets literary characters, symbols, and narratives as expressions of hidden psychic conflicts and emotional desires.

The episode also explores Jung’s collective unconscious and archetypal criticism, tracing how recurring myths, symbols, and narrative structures appear across cultures and literary traditions. From tragic heroes to death–rebirth cycles, literature becomes a map of humanity’s shared symbolic imagination.

Moving further, the conversation engages with feminist critiques of psychoanalysis and visual culture, particularly the concept of the male gaze and the representation of women within patriarchal narrative structures.

Designed for UGC NET English students, literature scholars, researchers, and serious readers, this episode offers a clear yet intellectually layered introduction to one of the most influential approaches in literary theory.